Dr. Andrew McPherson

Andrew McPherson is an electronic engineer, composer and instrument designer. He is a Reader (Associate Professor) in the Centre for Digital Music at Queen Mary University of London, where he leads the Augmented Instruments Laboratory. His research focuses on creating new musical instruments, including those which extend the capabilities of traditional instruments. Recent projects include the Magnetic Resonator Piano (MRP), an electromagnetically-augmented grand piano which produces new sounds acoustically from the piano strings and the TouchKeys multi-touch keyboard which lets the performer continuously shape each note by moving the fingers on the keys. The MRP has been used in over 15 pieces, including recent projects with the London Chamber Orchestra and the band These New Puritans. In 2013, the TouchKeys were successfully launched to the public in a Kickstarter crowd-funding campaign, and spun out into an independent company in 2016. Also in 2016, his lab launched a successful Kickstarter campaign for Bela, an embedded platform for creating low-latency interactive audio systems.At Queen Mary University of London, Andrew teaches on the Media and Arts Technology PhD programme and conducts school outreach activities with the TeenTech organisation, using electronic musical instruments to introduce students to engineering. As a composer, his music has been performed across the US, Canada and the UK; a CD of his music, “Secrets of Antikythera”, was released by Innova Recordings in 2013.To read more about Andrew’s projects, please follow this link to his official website.